One other item of interst is the latest twist of the TAP fisaco–Metro expecting bus operators to be TAP police. I agree with the Bus Bench folks this is utterly stupid, especially givnen the well known problems with false readings of cards by the fareboxes. Hopefully customer outrage will get this rescinded quickly.

I am sure he’d happily come to sunny California for a few weeks while the weather is crap in New England, to get TAP up and running, or at least on the way there.

Of course he might want to tell CUBIC to take a hike. The Boston “CharlieCard” is a Scheidt & Bachmann product. They are the German company who were actually sued by CUBIC after Scheidt & Bachmann won the Boston bid in an attempt to keep Scheidt & Bachmann out of the US market on the basis of “Buy America” regulations.

The other successful Smartcard in use in the USA is the Seattle-area ORCA card. Sure enough, the ORCA card is also not a CUBIC product; it came from ERG!
But in CUBIC’s need to triumph uber alles, they saved money on lawyers and just bought out all of ERG’s US operations last July.

Erik G.

For the record, here is the Cubic v. S&B case summary from the S&B law firm website:

Cubic Transportation v. Scheidt & Bachmann
Scheidt & Bachmann USA, Inc.
In late December 2004, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted our motion to dismiss a cause of action filed by Cubic Transportation Systems challenging a $100 million contract award for automated fare collection equipment made by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) to client Scheidt and Bachmann (S&B). Winston was retained by S&B after Cubic’s first challenge of the award, brought before the FTA, resulted in a ruling against S&B. Our attorneys fully litigated the matter, and the FTA reversed its initial finding and issued a precedent-setting decision in S&B’s favor. Cubic then filed a series of actions in Massachusetts state court in which we prevailed for S&B at the trial court level as well as before the state appeals court. When the Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed to hear Cubic’s emergency appeal of one of the decisions, we successfully briefed and argued the case on behalf of S&B.